Bento
by bakaprincess85
Summary: Usagi makes Mamoru a bento and surprises him. 1st ever Sailor Moon story! WOOT!


**BENTO**

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the way to a guy's heart is through his stomach, right? Well, it is, unless you're Usagi Tsukino and can't cook to save your life. Ignore that curry she had made a year ago because that was a once in a lifetime moment where it came out edible and it never happened again since.

However, Usagi didn't want to give up. She had finally gotten a boyfriend and she wanted to do what girls her age did – which was make homemade bentos and bring them to school to share with Mamo-chan. After seeing how he ate all her cookies for their first Christmas and then had to be taken to the hospital for food poisoning, she had stopped making him food. She felt really bad about that. It was their first Christmas together and she had to go and muck it up by making poisonous cookies.

Usually, when she had brought him something to eat, he ate it (with a secret grimace), but it had never been as bad as on that Christmas day.

Instead, she kept bugging her mum to teach her how to cook for her man. She knew that Mamo-chan was the one she wanted to marry when they were older and spend her life with. And to be a good housewife, she had to learn how to cook... even if she had almost set their kitchen on fire more than once.

She was lucky her mum understood and was patient with her when she made poisonous food after poisonous food. But as the months went by, the food she made went from poisonous to bad, to okay, and finally, she graduated to good.

Her grades suffered a bit for this (but this wasn't anything new what with almost nightly fights with the enemies), but she kept on practicing her cooking every day until finally, she was happy with how her meal came out and everyone at home praised her for a delicious dinner. Even Shingo in his own way ("I'm glad I don't have to worry about being sick because of your food again."). Dad, of course, went overboard by crying tears of happiness... until he found out the reason why she was trying so hard to learn how to cook. He was overprotective of his baby girl to the extremes and was already planning to purchase a shotgun to threaten Mamo-chan when he came to visit them (she had to promise her mum to bring him home someday soon. She would take care of dad. Usagi could almost imagine how that encounter would work. Her dad acting like a bull with angry breaths coming out of his nose and mum holding him to her side to stop him from grabbing that shotgun he wanted to buy and shooting Mamo-chan on the spot.

And so, D-day came. By D-day, I mean the day that she brought her bentos to school.

* * *

It was a nice spring morning, with sakura blossoms flying through the air as the wind blew them away from their trees.

Mamoru being Mamoru immediately noticed that Usagi was different this morning. She was tense and unlike her bubbly self. He had noticed that she had grown a bit quieter over the last few months and was steadily growing more and more worried about her.

Today was the day, Mamoru decided, that he had enough of her quietness. While it was nice at first, he had grown to miss her bubbly personality. Which was strange, since he was quite an introvert – but Usagi being Usagi had made him open up to her quite a bit and he had grown used to being surrounded by all that cheeriness. Not that she wasn't cheerful anymore, she just seemed to be more preoccupied lately.

It worried him.

During lunch, he decided. I'll speak to her during lunch and make her tell me what was wrong.

He thought of how to start the topic all through the classes instead of paying as much attention to what they were being taught as usual. He was almost relieved when the bell for the lunch break came. His thoughts were getting away from him.

He was quiet as he let Usagi pull at his hand as she led them up the stairs to the school roof like she did every day. If possible, she seemed even more nervous than in the morning. He felt his stomach clench in worry and unconsciously tightened his hold on her fingers, making her look back at him in a silent question.

Shaking his head, he went a bit ahead and opened the doors to the roof for her. Always the gentleman, as she used to tease him. The blonde in question gave him a smile as she preceded him onto the roof. She looked around herself, trying to find a quiet spot in the shade and then went ahead and plopped herself and her school bag down on the floor.

Mamoru followed and sat next to her.

However, before he could open his mouth and start on the speech he had prepared about how she worried him, she zipped open her bag and pulled out two bentos wrapped in a pink and red furoshikis*. The pink one was decorated with small white rabbits, while the red one was decorated with small black top hats that were an obvious nod to his Tuxedo Kamen form.

He was left speechless. Usagi hadn't made him any food since he had ended up in the hospital with food poisoning and he had quietly wondered what happened to that girl that always brought him something to eat (albeit the food was unedible most of the time) ever since then.

She was fidgeting a bit, he noticed, as he stared at the two bentos and then at his girlfriend. He alternated between the two for a few more moments and then gently pulled the red one that was obviously meant for him, towards him.

It wasn't just a homemade bento, he noticed when he unwrapped the furoshiki. It was a kyaraben**. He stared down at a chibi*** version of Tuxedo Mask. Nori was used for black, rice for the whites, and tomatoes and red bell peppers for red. She also used sakuraebi*** to make a slight skin-colored hue for the rice which she had arranged the face with. All in all, it was a rather attractive looking bento. And a cute one too, if he was honest with himself. The two black chopsticks resembled his cane and he had to smile a bit at the thoughtfulness that went into this bento.

He chanced a look at his girlfriend's blushing face and asked her gently,

"You made this for me?"

She nodded while she busied herself with unwrapping her own bento. It was, of course, arranged into a kyaraben as well, this time, her own Sailor Moon form. He didn't know how she made the food blue but decided to ask her later when she was less tense. For yellow, she used a bit more curry powder to make it more intense and a bit more like her hair color. Again she used tomatoes and red bell peppers for red.

Around both arrangements she made some tamagoyaki**** and octopus sausages with a few leafs of greens.

She must have put a lot of time and work into arranging these.

He didn't hesitate anymore.

Picking up his chopsticks, he gathered a piece of tamagoyaki and brought it up to his mouth where he started chewing it thoughtfully.

Usagi watched him nervously, and when he stayed quiet, she started rambling,

"I bugged my mum into teaching me how to cook because I felt so terrible that you always ate what I made for you even if it was unedible. I never wanted you to go to the hospital because of my cooking again and-" here she gulped and then went on to speak even faster. "-and I really wanted to make you good food in the future for when you came home from work. I wanted to have lunch and dinner ready for you so that you could just sit down and enjoy a meal..."

She grew steadily redder in the face as she uttered that. Mamoru felt his throat close a bit and his heart sped up at the intention behind those words. He swallowed the sausage he had been chewing and deciding that he didn't care if anyone else saw it, pulled his sweet girlfriend into his arms and gave her a kiss.

He could hear her gasp a bit in surprise since he wasn't that prone to such public displays of affection, but then she relaxed and returned his kiss with fervor. He could feel his pulse going faster and slowly pulled back. His blue eyes stared into her own blue orbs as he gave her a smile.

"It's a really delicious bento, Usako," he praised her softly. He could see her flush with pleasure and gave her another smile before attacking his bento again, eager to eat the food she had made him.

It was, after all, quite delicious.

*furoshiki is a traditional Japanese wrapping cloth, used to wrap everything. Furoshiki can be used for bento and gift wrapping, grocery shopping or even as clothing.

* * *

**kyaraben is short for kyarakuta bento, or character bento; it's a style of elaborately arranged bento which features food decorated to look like people, characters from popular media, animals, and plants.

***sakuraebi is small dried shrimp, which you grind up and mix with rice to get the pinkish color for faces

****tamagoyaki is a sort of Japanese omelette where you roll up together several layers of egg


End file.
